Watch the candid chat with Divya under :
When requested how she handled favouritism or the truth that she was changed by another person Divya mentioned, “It used to feel like a huge sense of loss, coming and being rejected or being told on the phone that someone else has been roped in. I’ve been dropped out of many movies at the last minute so that hurts because you feel sheer helplessness because you know how good you could’ve been in that role.But what I noticed was that I have a very strong family. My mother used to ask ‘Why are you upset?’ then I would say, mom, ‘I’ve been thrown out of the film, why? I don’t know.’ So she says ‘Does that stop your life? Life never stops and tomorrow’s another day.’In fact, it’s strange that the people, who have dropped me, I have worked with them a few years later with better roles.There are two choices that happen, either you brought down with all the rejections and get affected. Be it actors, technicians, writers or whoever, we are sensitive and rejection can get onto you. But you still we have to think: let people sit over our heads and let it affect you or you can say what do I have in my hand? Do I have butter chicken or daal? It’s your life and so you have to make what comes your way and there’s no other way. So I think I have been that way, wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. we are sensitive and rejection can get onto you. But you still we have to think: let people sit over our heads and let it affect you or you can say what do I have in my hand? Do I have butter chicken or daal? It’s your life and so you have to make what comes your way and there’s no other way. So I think I have been that way, wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. we are sensitive and rejection can get onto you. But you still we have to think: let people sit over our heads and let it affect you or you can say what do I have in my hand? Do I have butter chicken or daal? It’s your life and so you have to make what comes your way and there’s no other way. So I think I have been that way, wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. When asked how she dealt with favouritism or the fact that she was replaced by someone else Divya said, “It used to feel like a huge sense of loss, coming and being rejected or being told on the phone that someone else has been roped in. I’ve been dropped out of many movies at the last minute so that hurts because you feel sheer helplessness because you know how good you could’ve been in that role.But what I noticed was that I have a very strong family. My mother used to ask ‘Why are you upset?’ then I would say, mom, ‘I’ve been thrown out of the film, why? I don’t know.’ So she says ‘Does that stop your life? Life never stops and tomorrow’s another day.’In fact, it’s strange that the people, who have dropped me, I have worked with them a few years later with better roles.There are two choices that happen, either you brought down with all the rejections and get affected. Be it actors, technicians, writers or whoever, we are sensitive and rejection can get onto you. But you still we have to think: let people sit over our heads and let it affect you or you can say what do I have in my hand? Do I have butter chicken or daal? It’s your life and so you have to make what comes your way and there’s no other way. So I think I have been that way, wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. we are sensitive and rejection can get onto you. But you still we have to think: let people sit over our heads and let it affect you or you can say what do I have in my hand? Do I have butter chicken or daal? It’s your life and so you have to make what comes your way and there’s no other way. So I think I have been that way, wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. we are sensitive and rejection can get onto you. But you still we have to think: let people sit over our heads and let it affect you or you can say what do I have in my hand? Do I have butter chicken or daal? It’s your life and so you have to make what comes your way and there’s no other way. So I think I have been that way, wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. wanting to leave all these rejections and get the best of what I had. I have never had an author-backed role, so the roles I took up I gave it the X-factor as I was determination as I wanted to tell the people about me. So rejections come but you take them in your stride and now these past 7-8 years especially, things have changed. I also used to be underrated, deserves more but things changed gradually because people want good actors and there is an audience, who want to see us.”
Talking in regards to the trade placing labels on actors and placing them in brackets, Divya provides, “We live in a male-dominated film scenario and the masses will ask ‘picture ka hero kaun hai?’ firstly, so that is an aspect you can’t deny. Saying so, the audience is still changing. In fact, there is an audience, who have stories to be told, they want actors, and therefore a change is coming so everyone is now looking at good roles. So that is happening where Neenaji (Gupta) and everyone I would say have been here for years and it takes guts to say that ‘I want work’ and what’s nice is that people were actually sensitive to it. Am sure that somewhere, someone heard that and thought why shouldn’t we cast Neenaji. So it took one post to bring that change and it worked for her. We live in a ‘herd’ mentality, so we always feel safe and secure to do what the herd is doing and there’s always one person who’ll say ‘let’s do it this way’. I really respect people, who set examples. These guys have really set examples for women and I would say that the films which we call women-oriented films may just have a heroine as the protagonist or hero as the protagonist, how does it matter as a good film is a good film. The very fact that am doing this film Sheer Khurma, everyone’s like ‘How do you feel of being a part of the female-oriented film which has an LGBTQ topic. They are already de-marketing something which is away from the norm, so you’re cutting out the cause it is being made for. It’s just another film which everyone is curious to watch and is a good film. So I think we just need to call them good or bad films and stop labelling them. We even do it with actors. She an actress and that one is a supporting-actress but that’s nothing like it for me because am an actor. Right now I have 7 films and one of them is a lead role so should I start calling myself a heroine for that. No, am an actor. Am doing a negative role in one and a comedy role in another one, so I just call everyone actor. Don’t give a category to everything.Look at Sanjeev Kumar, he played a father to Jayaji and her hero as well. Those were amazing times. Rakhiji has also played a heroine to Amitji and his mother as well. So she’s an actor and suddenly doesn’t become a character actor. I don’t want to jump to categorise people and we don’t want to change that gap. So I have been really very fortunate to have broken this thing.”